


_Surplus Killing

by glenarvon



Series: _Brilliancy [18]
Category: Watch Dogs (Video Game)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-17
Updated: 2014-12-17
Packaged: 2018-03-01 21:47:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,816
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2788919
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/glenarvon/pseuds/glenarvon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Aiden's enemies decide to set a trap for him. Aiden decides to take it on.</p>
            </blockquote>





	_Surplus Killing

**Author's Note:**

> If playing fast and loose with in-game hacks bothers you, hang up now. If 5000+ words detailing Aiden's limitless badassness disagrees with your world view, hang up now.
> 
> Foxes, like most predators, engage in _'surplus killing'_ , where they kill more prey than they actually need, simply because it's available. Or for the fun of it.

[this takes place in late 2014 after bad blood, but before dark clouds]

* * *

 

Normally, he wouldn't have come. Or at least, he'd come with backup and a safety net. But this was not normal, he was going to set an example. Of course, he had always known the prize on his head would draw bounty hunters and fixers from all over the country. They came and he picked them off, one by one. Sometimes he got to them so early, they never saw him coming. Or he made sure they never even saw him at all, nor any traces of him anywhere. Others turned out to be skilled enough to bring themselves face to face with him, or at least scope to head. It didn't much matter, because it always ended the same way.

This was different, it was _bigger._ And he was growing a little tired of the game and his own constant paranoia it inspired. He _was_ ahead of them, but it cost him, time and energy and the longer it went on, the more likely he became to slip up, make one tiny, but crucial mistake. So this was a gift he wasn't going to waste. The fixers would learn a little lesson, hopefully it would be good enough to keep them off his back for a while, do enough damage to their confidence so they thought twice before taking him on.

It was simple mathematics. What they stood to lose had to outweigh what they stood to gain. Even a particularly stupid fixer would eventually learn not to play with fire.

Which brought him here, to a Club-owned warehouse down in Brandon Docks. It had been stripped days before in preparation, emptied of all valuables which might have been stored there. They even had attempted to take it out of the ctOS network, though it had taken only a little effort to reconnect things. Just because he planned on walking into their trap didn't mean he was going to sink himself to his neck in it.

There was just one last conundrum he couldn't solve. He had known something was brewing, but it was Jordi who had delivered the details and pointed him in the right direction. And Jordi wasn't trustworthy anymore _._ The only reason he could think of why Jordi would help him — and help at no charge — was because he hoped to cash in himself. A second trap could be in place, something he hadn't been able to spot, because Jordi, of all the fixers in Chicago, knew how he worked. Jordi could get to him. Didn't mean Jordi could take him down, just meant things would turn into an ugly mess.

So, was this Jordi's trap? Was he using the other fixers as cover for his own operation, or was it Jordi's way of apologising for screwing him over against Damien? Jordi tended to be unpredictable, but then, entirely predictable in his unpredictability. It just didn't seem like his style. Jordi was a hands-on type of guy, not one for convoluted plots and setups weeks in the making.

It _could_ be exactly what it appeared to be: A bunch of fixers after the big money, banding together for whatever strength they hoped there was in numbers.

Technically, it wasn't too late to back out, because even if he hadn't missed anything, if this really was what it seemed to be, it could still be fatal. The fixers _could_ have the numbers and the marksmanship and sheer, dumb luck on their side. He wasn't bulletproof. There was no guarantee he was better than them.

Sitting outside the warehouse in a stolen car, eyes cast down to his phone, awaiting the results as it scanned the surrounding area, the thought crossed his mind only briefly. He had not chosen the battlefield, but he was certain he knew it better, knew it's flaws and corners. It was going to be his show. If he wasn't good enough to be last man standing, the fixers deserved to get to him.

He got out of the car and slung the biometric rifle over his shoulder. No way he could hide a weapon this size, but there was a time and a place for subtlety and it was neither here nor tonight.

The fixers had invested some time into constructing the scenario to bring him here. He had taken care to make the vigilante's appearance be never quite according to schedule, never quite as predictable as his enemies might like, but this would have been difficult to ignore. In all probability, he really would have walked into that trap and from what he had seen, he wouldn't have survived it.

The criminal world had been shaken up badly, twice in quick succession. First, with Iraq's death the Black Viceroys had been thrown in disarray, sparking countless small turf wars among Iraq's lieutenants, fighting over who was going to control which part of Iraq's empire. The Viceroys had always been the most powerful gang in the Wards, even in Aiden's youth, and they had only grown since. But Iraq had been a stablising factor, without him, all bets were off.

Quinn's death had gone more smoothly, at least on the surface. His son, Niall, had slipped into Lucky's shoes and the transfer had gone without much of a hitch. Paying attention, listening to T-Bone and his contact at Chicago PD, or just _walking down the street_ on some days told a slightly different story. The Club was struggling to keep it together with Lucky Quinn's far-reaching influence suddenly gone. They were exposed, to rivals and the law in equal measure.

And into this atmosphere, the fixers had strewn their rumours to draw Aiden out. The underworld leaders, the rumour said, all of them, would come together under a truce and _negotiate_ how Chicago would be shared between them, restoring the mob-owned peace it had held before. The city was big enough for all of them, after all, and tearing each other apart was just ruining everybody's business.

No way in hell would Aiden have risked missing it.

The streets were deserted in all directions, not uncommon for Brandon Docks, but he suspected something more was at play this time. The warehouse had stood empty for a few months, the parking lot and loading areas left to be overgrown. A handful of shipping containers were haphazardly placed around, rusting away in the changing weather. Trash and other debris littered the place. The homeless preferred to stay closer to populated areas, but they'd take everything that offered shelter in winter. He saw none of those, no sign of the amassed force of fixers, either.

He stopped at the gate, it hung askew, but had clearly recently been moved. His phone hummed, informed him the scan had finally finished and he pulled it out, watching as it filled a 3D map of the place with red dots, enemies, or at least people. Profiler supplied names for some of them, it returned a handful of error messages, but the list of professions matched his expectation. Mercenaries, former soldiers, former police, private security contractors, most of them with records of one violent crime or other.

He was about to put the phone away, but as an afterthought, he switched off the scrambler. Blume — he was fairly sure it was Blume, with or without Club support — was paying good money for this show, they might as well enjoy it unpixelated. Just this once, when it wasn't in their interest to sent all of Chicago PD after him once the system identified him.

The inside of the warehouse was mostly empty, a broad walkway running its circumference about one and a half story above, housing offices or common rooms or storage for tools. He looked up as he walked inside, scanned the walkway for what he already knew was there: seven snipers, but all of them well out of sight to the naked eye.

At the centre of the hall, lit from above by strong lamps, were two crescent tables, set up like some political summit meeting, but both table and chairs were bare wood, set-dressing to fool only a casual onlooker. He wondered how long the fixers expected him to believe the scam.

He was supposed to reach the table, he decided. He should stop there, regard it and conclude he'd been played.

He strode through the empty hall, one hand hooked around the strap of the BAR, the other in his pocket, wrapped loosely around his phone. He knew it's contour by touch alone, good enough to know where he'd put all the important buttons. His boots made low sounds on the rough floor, crunching the dirt there as he advanced on the table. Four cameras tracked his movement, unblinking eyes on him, recording it all.

He stopped, turned on his heels to survey the empty table. Above him, something metallic scraped and hissed, the old walkway complaining under shifting weight. In a corner, something came loose and fell to the ground. He played along, he could afford to. Turned his head toward the noise, caught movement at the edge of his vision and finally looked up to meet a sniper's gaze past where he leaned behind the scope.

The laser stung his eyes briefly, before it chittered down to his chest and was joined by three others. Four on his back, then. Not the brightest thing to do, considering he was wearing a bulletproof vest, something they _could_ have anticipated. He wasn't a great fan of laser sights, either, but he supposed they served an additional purpose. It wasn't _enough_ just to kill him and take the money for it, no, they needed this moment. They needed him to _know._

He switched on the timer on his phone, then raised both hands over his head. He took a small step away from the table, turned in a slow circle to map them all. Ah, yes, there were the others. If he had miscalculated the time, this could be ugly. Even if the vest stopped the bullets — fairly good range for snipers, they might do some damage — he could end up with cracked or even broken ribs, no fighting condition for the two dozen guys hiding as backup outside.

He looked away from the sniper he was facing, found one of the cameras instead and gave the audience on the other end a hard look.

The counter on his phone reached zero, sent its signal and detonated the explosives he had spent the better part of a night carefully putting into place. They took out the support beams of the walkway and the entire thing came down in screaming metal, burning plastics and tearing wallboard. Somewhere above, windows shattered and added their glittering shards to pieces of broken furniture and scraps of singed paper.

Aiden thought of himself as nothing more than a talented amateur when it came to explosives. He had to do a lot of preparation to make sure his IEDs didn't just take the entire warehouse down. He had to weasel his way into the city archive, too, because floor-plans for the place weren't stored digitally. He'd been careful, made sure none of the bombs were too close to anything supporting the hall itself _and_ the devices had to be small enough that they didn't attract the attention of the fixers when they set up their own shit.

It seemed to have worked out exactly according to plan.

The shockwave rolled against him, carrying heat and choking dust, it picked up his coattails and whipped them around him. He dropped his hands, pulled his scarf over his mouth and nose and jump-started. Pulling the BAR from his shoulder and the phone from his pocket, stealing a quick look while he found cover behind still churning debris.

The men outside were already on the move, circling the warehouse to cover all exits, make sure he stayed put, hoping to get at him from all directions.

The blast from the IEDs had knocked out most of the cameras, only one was still responsive, though hanging by its cables. It was an unwelcome but not unexpected development, he'd have preferred a better look outside, but he was far from blind. A quick scan revealed several cellphones in his immediate vicinity, he couldn't pinpoint them exactly while they were moving, but more than enough to get some idea of where they were, updating the map.

While he was at it, he uploaded a virus to the phones, not bothering with those with any kind of security. He sent a signal to a randomly selected quarter of the phones so they'd overheat, hopefully in somebody's pocket. Results of this particular trick varied depending on brand and age of the phone and the health of its battery. If they were very unlucky, the phones exploded.

Lastly, he tapped into their communication. Or rather, he tried to. He wasted a precious moment staring at the error message while the dust around him slowly began to settle.

There was no sign of the snipers, probably crushed and buried under bent metal and broken wood. If one of them had survived, he'd soon wish he hadn't, it would be a while before help came to find them.

So, his would-be killers had forgone communication. It explained why he hadn't picked up anything before walking into the warehouse, but he had assumed they were simply holding to radio silence before the trap was sprung, but apparently they'd paid attention to how previous encounters with him went. Not bad, he thought vaguely, but dropped the phone into his pocket again and moved away from the debris.

He followed the outline of the hall until he found a gap to squeeze through and navigate his way to a door, easily scaling over or slipping past what blocked his path until he found one of the doors. It was only partially covered up, easy to clear out. The door opened outward, jammed perhaps but nothing a good tuck couldn't solve.

A group of fixers were coming for the door, scattered around outside to give him no clear shot. At least five, maybe more in case not all of them were carrying phones.

He pressed his back against the wall and waited.

Some enterprising fixer, if he had ctOS access for example, could know he was there and the wall wasn't thick enough to block concerted fire of a weapon with any kind of punch. They could kill him and he'd barely even know what hit him. It was a calculated risk, but then, his calculations tended to be good.

Someone tore open the door and the barrel of a gun preceded its owner as he edged inside carefully. The problem with riot gear and why Aiden preferred to cut down on armament, was it restricted vision and movement. He edged closer to the door, before the fixer came through and the man had no chance to spot him in time.

Aiden reached for the gun, closed a gloved hand around it and yanked the fixer inside, snapped the gun up and stepped into his knee. The fixer went down and one-handed, Aiden brought up the BAR, pushed it into his neck and fired downward, a salve going right through his torso, _inside_ his bulletproof vest.

He dropped the man's deadweight, put both hands to the BAR and, firing, crossed to the other side of the door. On this side, more broken debris offered some additional cover. He heard some shouts outside and sent the overheat signal to the nearest phone. A moment later, someone shrieked.

Aiden crouched down and leaned out of cover, using the moment of confusion, picked his targets and fired in short, hard bursts, leaned into the recoil as it punched his shoulder and strained his arms. The shots hit two men in the head, tearing open a neck and sending a spray of blood down over him as he stumbled in mid-run. The other took the burst in the face, an efficient, if extreme way to circumvent Profiler.

A third took the bullets into his arm and down his leg as he tried to dive for cover. Not dead, but definitely out. Left the one with the hot phone, but Aiden couldn't spot him. It was time to move anyway, he had at least twenty more coming for him and they knew where he was now. Time to go somewhere else.

He dipped out into the backyard and ran past the dead — or dying — fixers and into the position he'd sprung them from.

"Shit!" the owner of a molten phone shouted, squatting behind a concrete boulder as he spotted Aiden coming for him. Aiden swerved to the side, reached for the man and ignored the fixer's left-handed attempt to raise a handgun. He gripped the edge of the man's helmet and threw his full weight into a hard wrench. The helmet wasn't a very good hold, too loose to break the man's neck but he certainly felt it, screamed and was toppled over and onto his back. Aiden stopped over him, shot him in the face, but didn't stay.

Lamps mounted on tall poles flooded the open yard with white spotlights, brightness broken by the murky darkness of a city. He could switch the lights off entirely, but he wasn't sure it'd be to his disadvantage. The fixers were outfitted for a war-zone, they could be equipped with night-sight goggles, prepared for just such a stunt. He liked to work in darkness, it wouldn't be a bad guess. No, leaving the lights on was the better move and as long as he made sure his own night vision wasn't ruined, he could still make it work for him.

"There he is!"

If the man had had any sense, he'd have taken aim and fired instead of yelling, because he was coming out of the shadows where Aiden hadn't been able to spot him. The scan hadn't picked him up, either, he wasn't carrying anything networked to ctOS.

With the warning, Aiden had time to drop down behind the boulder. Time, too, to bring his own rifle back around and fire. He hit the fixer's legs and he stumbled, Aiden kept at it. The man was dead before he stopped moving.

Two more fixer had taken cover while their comrade was being mowed down, calling to each other, but too quietly for Aiden to understand. He gauged the distance, too far to make it even if he took them by surprise, but he didn't have time to spare. Others were already circling around the warehouse to get at him from behind or the side, where the boulder would be useless.

Bullets hissed close over his head, reminding him to keep it down. Rather than be cornered, he sent the overload order to the remainder of the phones he'd hacked earlier.

"The hell?!" he heard, giving the sign and he dove out of cover, blind-firing because he didn't have the time and he only needed to cross the distance. He jumped the heavy barrel that served one of the fixers as cover, kicked him in the face and brought his rifle around before he even landed and released another burst in the vague direction of the second man. At this range, he could barely miss and the fleshy shattering of bone alongside a sharply cut-off scream told him he hadn't.

He counted off two explosions in the distance and several screams. That made about ten down, give or take a few.

There was a trick to it all, a rhythm for him, because there were so many things for him to remember and to plan and to time. An eye on the phone, one through the scope and at least two to cover his back, another to make sure where he was going, looking ahead and behind and all sides. Riding the cameras gave him an advantage, though it tended to take long, time he spared only when he thought he had it. It was always a running calculation of risk and reward, a constant re-evaluation of how far he could go and come out alive on the other side.

It was juggling with weapons, too, swapping between the assault rifle and the pistol and the baton if he ran out of ammo and time to reload, if he got close enough to an enemy — or the other way around, because he still had blind spots no matter how hard he tried to cover all angles. He had to know which hits he could take and which would take him out of the fight, decisions stacking up within seconds.

The fight crossed the open field and ctOS had miscounted the numbers much more dramatically than he had anticipated. Perhaps it wasn't by chance, perhaps these people knew his methods better than they should, or perhaps he just wasn't a well-kept secret anymore. He found himself hard-pressed, forced to retreat one step after another he didn't want to take, just so he could keep the fixers from flanking him.

He was still counting them off, seventeen down, then eighteen. Twenty-three, no, twenty- _four._

Inside the warehouse, the dust had settled and it was dark. What lights there had been had died with the explosion. As he dove into that darkness, he thought he heard a whimper somewhere, some broken sniper still hoping for rescue. He had no time to check. A bullet grazed his arm, tore through the leather of his coat and ripped a sliver of flesh free, but then there was respite in the fire. He knew it was because they'd lost sight of him, had slowed their advance and swarmed the hall until a gunshot or just the spark on the muzzle of his pistol allowed them to find him again.

A low thud, off to the side, far too close and he knew it was a grenade and he was too close to get clear, if it was cooked or not. All he could do was throw himself away and down, as far as he could go and hope for the best. The blast threw him down, seared his back and the side of his head. It knocked the BAR from his hands and sent it flying off somewhere in the darkness.

"He's down!"

Aiden scrambled back to his feet, wondering if the grenade had knocked him out for a moment, because the fixers were already on him, open muzzles of shotguns about to blast right through his vest, perforate his unprotected limbs while he still struggled with the concept of balance. He wrapped his hand around the handle of the baton and brought it up, still retracted and punched the short length of metal into the nearest fixer's face, made a grip for the nearest gun with the other hand and shoved it aside, just enough to make the shot miss him, but close enough to feel the blast.

He ducked away under the shotgun after that, used the momentum to swing the baton, open it to its full length and brought it around on the back of another attacker while the group of them still struggled to turn around against their own inertia. He jumped aside, made another shotgun burst miss him by a handful of inches.

Coming up finally, behind a fixer, he got the baton square across his throat from behind, held him against as meat-shield while the steel of the baton choked him. It gave him a moment, enough to see one of the downed fixer, struggling ineffectively to get back up. His gun had fallen from his hands and he didn't seem to be going for it. Left one more and a few across the hall running toward them, unwilling to open fire while their comrades were tangling so closely with Aiden.

Aiden pulled the baton up and back and felt the fixer go limp in his hands. He let him slip away, shoved his coat back and pulled his pistol and shot from the hip upward, watched as the bullet cut through the last fixer's face from below, leaving a neat hole from the front and brain splattered behind.

He shoved the pistol back into its holster and took a running start, picked up the dropped shotgun from where it had fallen and slid over a piece of debris for whatever cover it offered. He slid further in its shadow and climbed a bent out of shape metal ladder leaning over a pile for height.

It was the optimum range for the shotgun, especially one loaded with slugs. It was clean, for a measure of _clean._ It took three shots to down them. One to the face, the other took two hits in the chest and the throat.

Aiden lowered the gun slowly. He'd made a mistake, of course, getting up so high, making himself an easy target and there it was, the price. Pebbles and dirt crunched under boots and Aiden turned to find another fixer advance on him, assault rifle ready. The man moved cautiously and it took a moment for Aiden to place his awkward stance, but he must be the one who had taken the baton to the back, he was lucky he could walk at all. He'd be lucky if he walked straight ever again, even if he survived.

"Alright you fucking bastard," the man growled, anger and something close to panic making his voice waver. "Drop the gun."

Aiden turned to face him fully. He lowered the shotgun, let it slip through his grip slowly until it fell to the metal, away through the gaps. Without taking his gaze off the fixer, he climbed down from his vantage point, bent down to pick up the baton.

"Hey!"

Aiden tilted his head, the only concession. With the baton in hand, he kept walking for the fixer with measured steps. He actually made the man retreat before he remembered he was holding a gun. "Stop right there!"

But he didn't stop until he stood right front of the fixer, muzzle of the rifle pointing straight at his face. He could have leaned into it, actually touched it if he'd wanted to. The fixer seemed somewhat confused, in pain and, even before that, realising just how much out of his depth he was. It took too long for him to pull the trigger, he shouldn't even have called out, what was he trying to do anyway? Take Aiden captive? Where would be the point? No one in this city wanted him on trial, he knew too many dirty secrets, no one could risk him spilling even one word.

The fixer came to a conclusion, his features hardened in the moment before he pulled the trigger.

Except, nothing happened.

The fixer had picked up the closest weapon, he would have checked it's ammo state, but paid no attention that he had gotten Aiden's biometric rifle. The one gun in the world that couldn't be turned against its owner.

Confusion washed over the fixer's face, closely followed by sheer panic. Aiden reached out to hold on to the rifle, a casual gesture, and brought up the baton, smashed its tip into the fixer's temple, knocking him out cold.

Another sound, right behind him and Aiden whirled around, twisted his BAR in his hand and let go of the baton to grip the rifle with both hands.

"What use is a weapon that won't fire?" another fixer asked across the barrel of a handgun. He looked a little worse for wear, but Aiden couldn't quite identify him like this. One he had taken down much earlier and either mistaken for dead or hadn't had the time to finish off.

The trick here was not to advertise his own actions, tip his enemy off to what he was going to do. The fixer didn't think the rifle in Aiden's hand was dangerous, but he must have enough knowledge and instinct to read the truth in Aiden's face.

"You know, you really are a tough motherfucker," the fixer continued. "And you're _batshit_. Taking you down is a fucking public service! I should get a medal. Just look at all of this!"

Aiden didn't. He kept his gaze glued to the fixer's gun, rather than the man's face, never meeting his eyes. He adjusted the angle of his gun a little, just to make sure he hit vulnerable tissue.

"You're sick, man! You know that, right? I will…"

Aiden shot, one harsh round, beating into the fixer's bulletproof vest and up, across his collar and throat and through the left half of his face. The blast threw the man back, tossed him through the debris and his gun fell from twitching fingers.

Aiden flexed his shoulders, took a few steps forward until he stood over the fixer. He was still alive, barely, one undamaged eye fixing on Aiden with some difficulty.

"If you want to lose a fight," Aiden said, put his rifle to the fixer's forehead. "Talk about it first."

He pulled the trigger and while the twitching stopped the wide-eyed disbelief remained on the dead fixer's face.

Aiden retrieved the baton, closed it and stored it away as he crossed back through the ruined warehouse to where the last camera was still swaying slightly from the wind cutting through the blown-out windows.

He glanced up at it, pulled his phone from his pocket and switched the scrambler back on.

"Show's over."

* * *

He had a few new stitches on his arm and they stung as the hot water of the shower ran over them. Not badly, by any stretch of the imagination, but enough to make themselves felt. His whole body was like that. Nothing unbearable, nothing that wouldn't heal _,_ just scratches and bruises, minor cuts and minor burns. It was barely even pain, just an ache settled deep inside his bones threatening to hollow him out. 

The buzzing of his phone cut into the revery of hot water and steam. Rather than respond — or curse because he hadn't switched it off — he just turned his face into the spray, let the water beat into his face until he felt the muscles there relax.

The phone kept buzzing. Someone _very_ persistent. He gave up, turned off the water and pushed his wet hair from his eyes, going through the very short list of people who even knew that number and all of them would know not to abuse it. Something important, then.

He picked up the phone from the edge of the sink, stopped briefly before he answered. Jordi? Not quite who he had expected.

"What?"

_"I won't ask how it went, because I really already know. Honestly, some days you are a pleasure to watch, kind of a turn on…"_

"Too much information, Jordi."

_"… and the Grid's all abuzz, too. It looks to me like you've really made your point. In fact, the consensus so far is, no one's going to take the contract. I mean, of course it's still on offer and I'm guessing it's just a question of time until the pot's sweetened some more. It's going to be some time until someone tries you again. You'll be bored to tears by how peaceful it's going to be, mark my words. Someone_ will _take it eventually, though."_

Aiden padded through the room, trailing water, because the towel slung over his shoulder wasn't really making much of a difference.

"Including you?" he asked. He got a beer from the minibar and a few painkillers from the open packet on the table. There was no opener, so he squeezed the phone between shoulder and ear, opened the bottle against the edge of the table.

_"Jesus, Pearce, will you ever let me hear the end of it? It was a good job. If someone'd take you down, wouldn't you rather it be a friend?"_

"You're not inspiring confidence," Aiden pointed out, chewing down on a pill before he washed it them with a sip from the bottle.

_"Would it help if I told you I knew you'd get yourself out of it?"_

"You held a gun to my face, if you thought I'd get out of it, you wouldn't have done it," Aiden said, but he couldn't summon much passion. He dropped the towel into an armchair and let himself fall after it, sinking into the cushions.

_"Does 'water under the bridge' mean anything to you? No, wait. It's Aiden Pearce I'm talking to and that expression is a complete mystery to him. But can we get this straightened out?"_

"I'm in a good mood," he said. The motel stocked surprisingly good beer. "What do you even want?"

On the other end of the line, Jordi gave a mannered sigh. _"What happened, happened. I can't take it back and, let's face it, I wouldn't even if I could. It's a question of self-respect. But it's all worked out for the best in the end and I really do like the kind of mayhem you get up to when the mood strikes you. It's a talent! And I like talent. How about this? We consider each other even. I tipped you off about today, didn't I? Not to pad myself on the shoulder, but I_ know _I saved your life."_

Aiden didn't answer immediately. "Not good enough," he said then. "How do I know you aren't looking to collect yourself?"

_"Oh, you don't. But look at me, eating humble pie just for you. If there's one thing you'll believe, how is this: It's more lucrative working with you than against you?"_

Aiden grinned, "That sounds more like the Jordi I know."

_"I just want to know where we stand. I think deserve that, after all the good times we've had? And the… one… slightly less good time."_

"Where we stand?" Aiden asked. "We stand where I don't go out of my way to put a bullet through your head and you don't give me a reason to change my mind about it. That's where we stand."

_"God, you're difficult."_

Some anger was working itself into Jordi's voice, patience slowly running low. _"Have it your way. See if I ever help you again."_

Aiden took another sip from the beer, still grinning a little.

"You aren't afraid of me. You need me for a job, don't you?"

Jordi had never been slow, he picked up on things quickly. True, he often chose to ignore it if he didn't care about it, but that was an entirely different dysfunction. This time, it took half a heartbeat longer than it should have and _that_ was just a little more satisfying than it should have been, too.

_"Finally,"_ Jordi huffed. _"Can we_ finally _talk business again? Good. I was a little worried you'd never come around."_

**Author's Note:**

>  **References:** _"If you want to lose a fight, talk about it first."_ Quellcrist Falconer in the Takeshi Kovacz novels by Richard K. Morgan (I've been waiting so long to quote Quell!)
> 
> **Author's Note on...**
> 
> **... Jordi:** If you've heard the audio logs in Bad Blood, you'll know that Aiden's sometimes given to angsting, bakes in his spare time and seems to regard Jordi as a pretty close approximation to a friend. I like to think the feeling's mutual. (Maybe they make cupcakes together on weekends.)
> 
> **... Aiden:** First close encounter with Aiden as POV character (Dogtown doesn't count) and he's an _experience_. He kept running away with the story and he's very hard to keep in line. (It's a thousand words more than I planned! Bloody hell...)
> 
> * * *
> 
> **Revised** _on 31/May/2015 and 01/June/2016_


End file.
